Another run for a hobby horse

Another run for a hobby horse

Jun 3, 2016 | Change, Marketing, Sales

‘Account Based Marketing’ or ABM is rapidly becoming the latest three letter acronym to which all and sundry seem to be hooking their horses.

All sorts of learned crap is being published,  assuring me that ABM is the way forward, so I just googled it, 39.5 million responses.

I always thought that serving key and strategically important customers, the core of ABM, was what successful marketing and sales had always been about.

Must be deluded?

20 years ago as a newly minted consultant hanging out my shingle after a successful corporate career, one of my first products was what I called ‘SKAM’.

While it always got a laugh when I put it up, the acronym stood for “Strategic Key Account Management”.

Having now had a look at some of the ABM stuff coming out, they have done little beyond update the technology and call something that is core to sales and marketing success by another name. Then because they are calling it something new, try and flog it to unsuspecting and perhaps intellectually compromised people with too much money and perhaps not enough experience to understand what marketing really is all about.

Too snarky?

Perhaps, but it is this sort of nonsense that gives those of us who are thinking about this stuff, and have been for a long time, a bad name.

Those who read my musings regularly will know I have a corral full of hobby horses which I let out for a run occasionally. This is one of those occasions, so forgive my rant, but it is fun, and it is my blog!

The greatest failure of marketing management.

The greatest failure of marketing management.

Jun 2, 2016 | Change, Leadership, Lean, Marketing

 

The headline is a big call, competing as it does with some real doozies.

Remember “New Coke” or the Ford ‘Edsel‘ or perhaps Thomas Watsons declaration that there was a world market of no more than 5 for computers?

This one is a general observation on the nature of marketing people generally and their project management skills, at least in my experience.

They tend to spend too little time really defining a problem, but then jump effortlessly to a conclusion, leaving a pile of crap in their wake for others to clean up, and sub optimal outcomes from projects.

The explosion of marketing technology is not just making the shortcomings more obvious, it is delivering the means to measure it.

Holy cow Batman: Accountability!

The smoke and mirrors are being removed, leaving many self declared marketing gurus naked.

Leaving aside the question of individual capability, the root cause of this can usually be pinned down to a failure of project planning.

Specifically the failure to recognise the nature of critical activities that are sequential, building on the one before. For example, only a fool would lock into a creative approach and copy before the persona of the target market was absolutely crystal clear.

This notion is entirely different to the usual ‘critical path’ which can be a moveable feast as timetables move around.

Critical activities are just that, and they do not move around, at all. Project planning should always acknowledge the time necessary to complete each critical activity, and the specific sequence that is necessary.

Marketing project planning is no different to planning any other context, although the questions to be answered are usually less black and white, which simply means that the planning process needs to be rigorous and scientific if it is to be any good.

Marketers have a lot to learn from the manufacturing end of the lean movement.

4 essential  marketing success factors.

4 essential  marketing success factors.

Apr 6, 2016 | Change, Management, Marketing, Small business

I originally studied to be an accountant, it seemed logical at the time.

My dad was sort of an accountant, taking over the family small business after he returned from the rumble in New Guinea in the ‘forties’. He was the only son, taking over the family business was the done thing, like it or not.   He was a practical, objective bloke, and ran the business by the numbers.

It seems with hindsight that I had absorbed the pain and frustrations of his small business as a kid until the market changed radically in the sixties, and the business tanked, and Dad found himself in a job he hated for the next 25 years to keep food on the table.

Now I am that unusual marketer, one that not only understands the numbers, but who has a feeling for them, and advocates loudly that the numbers are the foundation of a business. You simply must know, understand and leverage them in order to be successful.

Wrapping up  the marketing and financial management skills into one bag, there are a four elements that I regard as essential to success.

Logic and extrapolation are driven by assumptions. Accountants are black and white,  debit or credit of the ledger. It is really easy to be seduced by the numbers spat out by a spreadsheet, but they are only as good as the assumptions about all sorts of things that make them worth the paper they are on. The greater the degree of interrogation of the assumptions driving the line of logic being employed, the better. I used to annoy the daylights out of my marketing teams by insisting that when delivering a business case, they came at the projections from at least 2 entirely different perspectives as a means to test the assumptions they were using.

Weight reason greater than passion. Often I have said that there is nothing so contagious as a dose of passion, and I stick to it, passion is great, irreplaceable, but not t the expense of reason. Passion should be build on a foundation of reason.

Greatly value the intuition of experience. Some things are just not quantitative. Have you ever felt that something was ‘just right’ without being able to articulate why? When I get that feeling in a domain where I have deep experience, usually I go with it, and the intuition usually pays off.

Accept that you are  not always right. In business we are trying to be alchemist, to tell the future and allocate resources accordingly. Not easy, and no matter certain you are of the assumptions, your intuition, and the rosy picture pained  by the numbers, shit can and does happen, and you just get it wrong. Accept it, cut your losses, learn form the experience and move on.

Experience is hard won, and in some cases can be turned into the wisdom to be passed on in the effort to better serve our customers.

8 reasons the opportunity for consumer goods SME’s has never been greater.

8 reasons the opportunity for consumer goods SME’s has never been greater.

Mar 14, 2016 | Change, Management, retail, Strategy

Think about it.

  • Many domestic competitors are gone, sent to the wall by combinations of the high $A, the power of the retail duopoly to call the tune with prices and terms, house brand expansion, and poor management.
  • Coles and Woolies have lost some of their grip as Aldi makes inroads, and some of the independents like Ritchies continue to compete effectively in local markets, and access to food service, ingredient and alternative retail becomes easier.
  • Consumer brand loyalty has been disrupted by the disappearance of some of the favoured brands, offering opportunities to forge new brand loyalties
  • Marketing expenditure can now be highly directed, and its effectiveness measured and continuous improvement be applied.
  • The costs of the tools like the analytics required to do effective category management, a data intensive exercise are  getting cheaper and cheaper, and the skills needed to make sense of the data more available.
  • SME’s are recognising that collaborative actions are not verboten, but are in fact very sensible and cost effective. Making it easier, digital technology has removed one of the greatest barriers to effective collaboration, the inability to communicate.
  • SME management has also recognised that collaboration is strategically and operationally sensible to build comeptitive scale to enable long term prosperity, so there are potential partners around.
  • Export is easier, as trade barriers are dropping, and product niches are often global

None of this of course is of any value unless you have the cash flow, determination, and management capability to make the changes necessary. However, those that have survived the last 10 years are a robust bunch, now the pressure is off a bit, don’t make the mistake of taking a breather, get in there!

 

The 6 ways to benefit from losing a tender

The 6 ways to benefit from losing a tender

Feb 29, 2016 | Change, Sales

Most of the businesses I work with are medium sized, at best. Most have a significant functional capability that can deliver great value, but they often do not have the ‘grunt’ in other areas to get over the line with large customers.

Many of them are in businesses where competitive tenders are a fact of life, it is a characteristic of many B2B markets, and whilst it is breaking down, the bias towards ‘The big guy’ remains. As they say in corporations,  ‘You do not  get fired for buying from IBM’ which is just a way of expressing the risk aversion of those in many large businesses where making a mistake is career-toxic.

So, why celebrate when you lose?

Here are 6 reasons:

  1. You did well to get on the radar. A key component of B2B marketing is getting on the radar of those in your ideal customers who have some influence, if not always decision making power. Being included in a tender list is evidence that you have succeeded crossing that first hurdle.
  2. Customer intelligence. The information in a tender necessary for tenderers to adequately meet the specifications can tell you a lot about the business. What are its priorities, their capabilities in your areas of competence, their budgeting and  buying rhythm,  and how the buying process works. All great information. It is also extremely useful to assess weather or not they are someone you want to do business with. Selling is a transaction, a 2 way process, as the seller, it is your choice to work with a potential customer or not, so do not be afraid to work only with those who will not only pay you, but value what you bring to the table.
  3. Know the personnel & process. People buy from people, not corporations, the better they know, like and trust you, the greater the chance you have. Getting to know like and trust is a human process, it happens over time, face to face. Preparing and submitting a tender while painful when you lose, is a great way to create other opportunities during the process. Even after you have lost, don’t waste the opportunity to reinforce the relationships that will serve you the next time.
  4. Follow up intelligence. Keeping in touch with a project you have missed out on can tell you a lot about the client, and also a lot about the winning tenderer.  Knowing your competitor better than they know you is always an advantage.
  5. Other opportunities. If the tender you lost was the first tender you did for the customer, you should not be surprised that you lost. Change is hard, and risky, those managing tenders like a simple easy life, so they tend to stay with what they know. However, it is also in their interests to have options, so being around and interested, making yourself an option, might open up  other small opportunities that would just normally get missed. Getting a foot in the door with a small job and doing it really well is the best way I know of to get on the next big tender list.
  6. You get to know where you are not wanted. Sometimes there are opaque barriers to success. Try as you might, make the tenders truly great, and you still do not win, or even get any useful feedback, get the message. Our time combined with our expertise is the most valuable resource we have, don’t waste it where it is not valued, or where there is some invisible barrier to success. Move on.

Remember as well that those awarding tenders are just people, they like to he liked and valued. They like to think that they are awarding business to those who really want it, and are determined to do a great job. So, be persistent and committed, although never ‘needy’, seek to assist them in ways not necessarily associated with a tender, it will help keep you on the radar, and build a relationship.

The 7 most stupid innovation killing behaviors I have seen.

The 7 most stupid innovation killing behaviors I have seen.

Jan 15, 2016 | Change, Innovation

Most of the innovation initiatives I see successfully predict the past, but fail miserably at predicting the future in any way that enables commercial success.

In other words, they just extrapolate what has happened in the expectation that history will repeat itself unchanged.

Sometimes it does, but most often the key lesson from history is that we need to learn from it so we can better anticipate and react the next time, not that the same stuff will happen again.

In 35 years successfully engaged in the processes of innovation as a corporate jockey, and more recently as an adviser and contractor, I have seen and been involved in and directed a significant variety of programs. That experience has offered the opportunity to see some almighty clangers with a few common roots, along with the outstanding successes.

Following are the 7 most common causes of innovation failure I have seen.

 

  1. Structure-less programs. Employees and stakeholders are asked, often directed, to come up growth ideas, it is a part of the strategic plan after all. However, there is no structure to collect, process and collate the fragments, and the sometimes fully formed ideas that emerge. Net result, everyone gets annoyed at the failure of yet another innovation effort that has cost a bomb.
  2. Failure to define the problem. Out of  the box thinking is fine, but out of the postcode is usually useless. True innovation only comes from finding the solution to a problem, in the absence of a problem to be solved, nothing happens.
  3. Not walking the talk. Business leaders often talk about innovation and risk taking, then ensure that anyone who steps out of line gets whacked. Risk-taking must be in the enterprise  DNA, top to bottom.  However, I am a bit sick of all the ‘failureporn’ around, of the ‘fail fast, fail often’ type, which sometimes serves to remove responsibility for failure from the individual, meaning that due diligence, a solid hypothesis, and a problem definition, and After Action Reviews do not get done, leading to a failure to learn. People watch what those in power do, rather than listening to what they say, then follow what they do.
  4. Resource allocation does not happen. Management wants the ‘breakthroughs’, but are unprepared to allocate the resources, This is usually a function of the built in risk profile of the enterprise and its leadership, and is related to the talk and walk above. Resources take time, money, access, (to information, leadership, outside info, etc.) and assistance to be assembled, allocated, deployed, and then have the deployment optimised, before  outcomes arrive.
  5. Silver bullet thinking. If they can just find it, there is a remarkable, easy, hugely profitable solution out there somewhere, will somebody just get off their arse and find it please. Never works in real life, just  the movies.
  6. Excluding ‘trouble-makers’. This is a “biggiee”, the single most common problem I see with most innovation efforts.  Almost no matter how hard most try to gather expertise of various types and from differing domains, experience with innovation initiatives, and well meaning consultants and experts, they fail. Most commonly because unwittingly they gather those like themselves, excluding those that  make them uncomfortable, the ‘crazies’  whose ideas and views are inconsistent with some tacit understanding of what is possible and what is likely. In short, they exclude the mavericks, outspoken, different, and disturbing they may be, essential to a delivering even a modest chance of predicting what is just around the corner, let alone 3-5 years out there.
  7. The government will do it. Government has a role in my view, but in science and basic research, long term investments, not in the commercial development of that research. They are crap at that because there is way too much commercial risk involved, and bureaucracies, particularly public ones, are highly risk averse. It is different to just funding a bunch of smart people to think about what makes the universe tick.

 

Successful innovation is never a ground hog day event. It takes commitment, vision, guts, resources, and it makes you feel uncomfortable and sweaty. It is also the lifeblood of success and commercial sustainability.

When you need a helping hand who has learnt from history, give me a call, but be warned, I am a trouble maker, someone who will question all your sacred cows and sometimes recommend execution.